History of American Labor

Labor history of the United States

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In the first place, the wartime economy required labor peace. Therefore, the federal government facilitated the formation and growth of unions. At the same time, the wartime economic boom required many new workers. With the end of European immigration and the draft of white men into the military, women and African Americans found new opportunities. The long-term consequences of the war differed sharply for women and men. The war did help to provide the necessary impetus to pass the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.

Constitution, giving women the right to vote. For African Americans, the war sparked a major demographic, economic, and political transition. Between and , nearly , African Americans migrated from the South to northern cities, with another , following in their wake during the s. The Great Migration, as this movement of black southerners to industrial cities has been called, began a process that not only transformed the lives of the migrants but also fundamentally changed the populations and politics of major American cities.

In the s, Harlem was especially fertile ground for black working-class politics. Building on the longstanding activism of Hubert Harrison and others, people like A. Philip Randolph who got their start in the s would help build a nationally powerful, labor-based civil rights movement in the s and s. World War I seemed to offer an opportunity for workers to improve their position in the economy. Workers, in fact, gained a great deal in real wages and political power during the brief period of nearly full employment during the war.

In , alone, more than 4 million workers—approximately one-fifth of the workforce—went on strike. A general strike of 60, in Seattle, Washington, a strike by nearly the entire police force in Boston, Massachusetts, and a national steel strike of , workers in Pittsburgh and beyond Figure 6 are representative of the broad scope of the strikes by workers fearful that they would lose what they had won during the war and facing the prospect of a severe postwar recession.

In each case, the workers lost, and they ended up more divided than before, and more desperate for jobs at virtually any wage. Photo by Bain News Service, The benefits of the business decade were deeply unequal.

To many Americans, the s seemed to promise the unending expansion of the American economy. The number of telephones doubled, by about half of Americans had indoor toilets, and Henry Ford refined assembly line production, allowing many working families to own a car. Yet the expansion of the consumer economy depended on an equal expansion of the consumer credit economy; Americans bought their radios and other modern wonders on installment plans.

Moreover, even with the greater availability of credit, full participation in the consumer economy remained a dream for most. As the economic historian W. Unions declined sharply in the s under pressure from a conservative attack. Perhaps most importantly, some four hundred firms created Employee Representation Plans, or company unions, which sought to promote worker allegiance to the company and to provide a kind of pressure release for workers thinking about organizing in their own interests.

Welfare capitalists sought to prevent unions from ever rising again, and for a time they succeeded.

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The number of strikes receded dramatically, and union membership declined. The success of unregulated markets and welfare capitalism, however, was short-lived, and the mass unemployment, poverty, and insecurity of the s would help spark the greatest surge in union members in U. From a high of on September 3, , the Dow Jones Industrial Average ultimately fell to a low of Approximately five thousand banks failed between and Industrial production declined by over half between the crash and the middle of By that year, unemployment soared to between one-quarter and one-third of the total labor force.

Things were not much better for those who managed to hold onto employment: Economic sectors that had been struggling in the s saw conditions only worsen; farm income declined by 60 percent, and one-third of famers lost their land in the s. The industries that had driven the prosperity of the s were now failing; by , the automobile industry was producing at only 20 percent of its capacity. The stock market crash laid bare the underlying weaknesses in the U. Hoover responded to the crash much more energetically than previous presidents had in similar crises, but his efforts were too limited to meet the depth of this one, in part because he remained steadfastly committed to voluntaristic, optimistic, Progressive-style interventions.

As realization of the deepening crisis dawned on him, Hoover also increased federal funds for public works, moved to cut taxes, and requested private agencies, as well as state and local governments, to provide relief to the approximately 7 million unemployed by Thousands of Americans joined in organizing for relief from the federal government. In unemployed organizations, spearheaded by socialist and communist organizers, Americans demanded monetary relief and reinstalled tenants in their apartments when they were evicted.

The most important protests and strikes of the s were still years away, but the unemployed organizing of the early s played an important role in increasing popular militancy. Congress pay them the bonuses they had been promised for their service in the war. For weeks thousands of veterans camped on Anacostia Flats, within sight of the Capitol, while President Hoover and Congress refused to pay the bonuses.

Finally, the president sent the U. By , Herbert Hoover had become by all accounts the most unpopular person in the United States. Instead, the New Deal represented a series of experiments which, though they did not pull the nation out of the depression only economic mobilization for World War II would do that , still dramatically transformed the American economy by creating a new welfare state, strengthening unions, and affirming the economic importance of government action as a source of both spending and business regulation. President Roosevelt immediately took steps to address the national crisis.

He initiated important banking reforms, rationalizing and regulating the banking system and providing deposit insurance. Together, these reforms arguably created the conditions for relative financial stability that helped make possible the growth of a mass middle class after World War II. Roosevelt and his allies also ended the alcohol ban of Prohibition, eliminating one cause of suffering and chaos in working-class communities. He also expanded direct relief to the poor and enlarged public works projects significantly.

The NIRA eliminated most antitrust restrictions and, in return, asked businesses to cooperate with the National Recovery Administration NRA , a new federal agency which would oversee a wide range of economic activities, notably wages, the prices of consumer goods, and the cost of transportation. The Supreme Court, however, struck down the NIRA because the law amounted to unconstitutional federal intervention in interstate commerce. Yet the NIRA had two longer-lasting and largely unforeseen consequences.

First, it reinforced the federal commitment to public works programs as part of the solution to the national crisis. Although NIRA, and its Section 7a, were quickly found unconstitutional, the support of the federal government for labor organizing helped strengthen an already growing surge in rank-and-file labor organizing. In the wake of the passage of Section 7a, millions of American workers acted on their desire for union representation—more than 1, strikes occurred in alone—while also demonstrating that the AFL would not be able to contain or take full advantage of the aspirations of American industrial workers.

Mass strikes broke out in among West Coast dock workers, in auto parts factories in Toledo, Ohio, in the trucking industry in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in the East Coast textile industry. In each case, the AFL had made initial efforts to act on the rights specified in Section 7a and to organize thousands of new workers. The AFL, however, either backed down completely or failed to address the grievances of rank-and-file workers.

Tens of thousands of workers then acted without the support of the AFL. In Toledo, workers at the Electro Auto Lite Company survived clashes with National Guardsmen to win union recognition, wage increases, and other gains, while creating an important piece of the foundation for what became the United Auto Workers. In Minneapolis, four workers died in citywide violence, but they also broke through in that previously hardcore anti-union city and set the stage for the national unionization of the trucking industry.

In the long term, the strikes helped organize broad sectors of the American working class, but in the short term the strikes also helped polarize domestic politics. Indeed, and were years of greatly increasing political conflict. President Roosevelt found his support from business leaders evaporating after NIRA was struck down and after the strikes demonstrated the threat, as owners saw it, of giving workers the right to unionize.

Radical communists and socialists joined militant organizers for the unemployed to push for greater support for the unemployed. In the long run, both allowed for a major reduction in poverty among young people and the elderly. In addition, the Second New Deal greatly expanded public works programs. The Second New Deal had only limited immediate effects. The first Social Security check did not go out until January 31, The public works agencies were administered by local offices and were, therefore, racially segregated in the South and everywhere tended to benefit white male workers.

New Deal legislation increased the benefits that African Americans derived from the federal government, especially in northern cities, where black voters gradually shifted to the Democratic Party beginning in the late s. Yet New Deal employment benefits did not apply to agricultural workers or domestic workers, which meant that most black and female workers were not covered by unemployment insurance or Social Security.

At the same time, programs such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Tennessee Valley Authority, among others, directly or indirectly displaced significant numbers of black farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers from the land. Moreover, as some of the New Deal measures began to improve economic conditions, President Roosevelt and his advisors moved to scale back federal spending in the belief that the recovery could proceed on its own, and the economy slowed down again.

For all its limitations, the Second New Deal helped energize the U. With federal recognition of their right to organize, American workers in previously non-union industries created another surge in organizing activity. This new movement to organize the unorganized differed from the strikes because it was a coordinated and concerted drive for industrial unionism.

Led by John L. In and , the CIO broke through in the notoriously anti-union auto industry by deploying sit-in strikes at General Motors plants in Flint, Michigan Figure 8. Occupying the GM factories, workers won community support and, after bitter battles in the streets with many women on the front lines , they forced the company to recognize the CIO union. The stunning success at GM persuaded U. As the CIO succeeded in organizing industrial workers, the differences between the AFL and the new unions became increasingly apparent.

CPUSA members became perhaps the most energetic and persistent of union organizers. Finally, in November , the CIO held a national convention and created an independent confederation of industrial unions, now known as the Congress of Industrial Organizations. During the first years of the decade, the CPUSA emerged as an ally for black workers and for the cause of civil rights.

Communist Party organizers, for example, led many of the unemployed organizations, fighting to bring government resources to black neighborhoods and to prevent the eviction of black tenants. Black Americans pragmatically took advantage of such alliances. They were never members of the Communist Party in large numbers, but some black organizers and radicals joined the party at least for a short time, and many were generally willing to work with it to fight racial inequality through the labor movement.

CIO leaders, including the important group of left-wing organizers, understood that for practical or idealistic reasons, or both, the new industrial unions could challenge the AFL and their employers only if they built a culture of interracialism. For all the interracial organizing of radical activists and the CIO, black workers forged their own paths into the labor movement. They acted as the servants of white customers on Pullman trains, providing first-class service in return for tips. They earned meager wages, which meant that they needed to play to the racist stereotype of the subservient black man.

Some historians have argued that the access to jobs as Pullman porters helped create the foundation for the black middle class, but for many workers at the time the work was degrading, required long hours, and paid far too little. The porters called on New York socialist A. Philip Randolph Figure 9 to lead their union drive. For twelve years, Randolph and the men and women organizing for the BSCP struggled to overcome resistance from the Pullman Company and skepticism toward unions in the black community.

The Pullman Company bought support from black leaders, especially in its home city of Chicago, by donating money to local black organizations. The support worked, and the BSCP found that African Americans in Chicago not only distrusted unions because of their history of racial exclusions, but also saw labor protests as disreputable and perceived the Pullman Company to be the friend of the black community.

Information Agency, August 28, The BSCP found the s a much more productive period. At the same time, Randolph grew in stature as the foremost black labor leader and became the first head of the National Negro Congress NNC , a characteristic Popular Front organization that sought to forge alliances among communists, socialists, and liberals organizing against racial and economic inequality. While the BSCP reached out to black leaders and community members, the union also took advantage of the Railway Labor Act to hold successful union elections among black porters.

Two long years later, the Brotherhood finally signed its first contract with the Pullman Company, the first union contract for black workers with a major corporation. President Roosevelt also helped create a fundamentally new national political alignment; success for the Democratic Party outside the South, where the Democrats remained a conservative party until the rise of the southern wing of the Republican Party in the last third of the 20th century would depend upon winning the votes of ethnic urban voters, unionized workers, and African Americans.

When Japan attacked the U. Despite its labor reform rhetoric, the Knights of Labor attracted large numbers of workers hoping to improve their immediate conditions. As the Knights carried on strikes and organized along industrial lines, the threatened national trade unions demanded that the group confine itself to its professed labor reform purposes; when it refused, they joined in December to form the American Federation of Labor afl.

The new federation marked a break with the past, for it denied to labor reform any further role in the struggles of American workers. In part, the assertion of trade union supremacy stemmed from an undeniable reality. As industrialism matured, labor reform lost its meaning—hence the confusion and ultimate failure of the Knights of Labor. Marxism taught Samuel Gompers and his fellow socialists that trade unionism was the indispensable instrument for preparing the working class for revolution. That class formulation necessarily defined trade unionism as the movement of the entire working class.

The afl asserted as a formal policy that it represented all workers, irrespective of skill, race, religion, nationality, or gender. But the national unions that had created the afl in fact comprised only the skilled trades. Almost at once, therefore, the trade union movement encountered a dilemma: As sweeping technological change began to undermine the craft system of production, some national unions did move toward an industrial structure, most notably in coal mining and the garment trades.

But most craft unions either refused or, as in iron and steel and in meat packing, failed to organize the less skilled.

And since skill lines tended to conform to racial, ethnic, and gender divisions, the trade union movement took on a racist and sexist coloration as well. For a short period, the afl resisted that tendency. Formally or informally, the color bar thereafter spread throughout the trade union movement.

Labor Movement

In , blacks made up scarcely 3 percent of total membership, most of them segregated in Jim Crow locals. In the case of women and eastern European immigrants, a similar devolution occurred—welcomed as equals in theory, excluded or segregated in practice. Only the fate of Asian workers was unproblematic; their rights had never been asserted by the afl in the first place.

But the organizational dynamism of the labor movement was in fact located in the national unions. Only as they experienced inner change might the labor movement expand beyond the narrow limits—roughly 10 percent of the labor force—at which it stabilized before World War I. Partly because of the lure of progressive labor legislation, even more in response to increasingly damaging court attacks on the trade unions, political activity quickened after Henceforth it would campaign for its friends and seek the defeat of its enemies. This nonpartisan entry into electoral politics, paradoxically, undercut the left-wing advocates of an independent working-class politics.

That question had been repeatedly debated within the afl , first in over Socialist Labor party representation, then in over an alliance with the Populist party, and after over affiliation with the Socialist party of America. Although Gompers prevailed each time, he never found it easy. In response, the trade unions abandoned the Progressive party, retreated to nonpartisanship, and, as their power waned, lapsed into inactivity. It took the Great Depression to knock the labor movement off dead center.

The discontent of industrial workers, combined with New Deal collective bargaining legislation, at last brought the great mass production industries within striking distance. Lewis of the United Mine Workers and his followers broke away in and formed the Committee for Industrial Organization cio , which crucially aided the emerging unions in auto, rubber, steel, and other basic industries.

He compares wages and the standard of living in Pittsburgh with Birmingham, England. The American advantage grew over time from to , and there was a heavy steady flow of skilled workers from Britain to industrial America. The United Mine Workers was successful in its strike against soft coal bituminous mines in the Midwest in , but its strike against the hard coal anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national political crisis in President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise solution that kept the flow of coal going, and higher wages and shorter hours, but did not include recognition of the union as a bargaining agent.

The Women's Trade Union League , formed in It did not organize them into locals; its goal was to support the AFL and encourage more women to join labor unions. It was composed of both workingwomen and middle-class reformers, and provided financial assistance, moral support, and training in work skills and social refinement for blue collar women. Most active in — under Margaret Dreier Robins , it publicized the cause and lobbied for minimum wages and restrictions on hours of work and child labor.

Also under Dreier's leadership, they were able to pass crucial legislation for wage workers, and establish new safety regulations. The Industrial Workers of the World IWW , whose members became known as "Wobblies", was founded in Chicago in by a group of about 30 labor radicals. Their most prominent leader was William "Big Bill" Haywood. Many, though not all, Wobblies favored anarcho-syndicalism. Much of the IWW's organizing took place in the West, and most of its early members were miners, lumbermen, cannery, and dock workers. Dedicated to workplace and economic democracy , the IWW allowed men and women as members, and organized workers of all races and nationalities, without regard to current employment status.

At its peak it had , members with , membership cards issued between and [50] , but it was fiercely repressed during, and especially after, World War I with many [ citation needed ] of its members killed, about 10, [ citation needed ] organizers imprisoned, and thousands more deported as foreign agitators.

The IWW proved that unskilled workers could be organized. The IWW exists today, but its most significant impact was during its first two decades of existence. In the U. Supreme Court decided Loewe v. Lawlor the Danbury Hatters' Case. In the Hatters' Union instituted a nationwide boycott of the hats made by a nonunion company in Connecticut. Owner Dietrich Loewe brought suit against the union for unlawful combinations to restrain trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Court ruled that the union was subject to an injunction and liable for the payment of triple damages.

Jeffrey Helgeson

This was not a typical case in which a few union leaders were punished with short terms in jail; specifically, the life savings of several hundreds of the members were attached. The lower court ruling established a major precedent, and became a serious issue for the unions. The Clayton Act of presumably exempted unions from the antitrust prohibition and established for the first time the Congressional principle that "the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce".

However, judicial interpretation so weakened it that prosecutions of labor under the antitrust acts continued until the enactment of the Norris-La Guardia Act in Gompers and nearly all labor unions were strong supporters of the war effort. They used their leverage to gain recognition and higher wages. To keep factories running smoothly, Wilson established the National War Labor Board in , which forced management to negotiate with existing unions.

They fiercely opposed efforts to reduce recruiting and slow war production by the anti-war IWW and left-wing Socialists. The AFL membership soared to 2. Anti-war socialists controlled the IWW , which fought against the war effort and was in turn shut down by legal action by the federal government.

In , the AFL tried to make their gains permanent and called a series of major strikes in meat, steel, [54] and many other industries. Management counterattacked, claiming that key strikes were run by Communists intent on destroying capitalism. Lewis called a strike for November 1, in all soft bituminous coal fields.

Mitchell Palmer invoked the Lever Act , a wartime measure that made it a crime to interfere with the production or transportation of necessities. Ignoring the court order , coal workers walked out. The coal operators played the radical card, saying Lenin and Trotsky had ordered the strike and were financing it, and some of the press echoed that language.

Lewis, facing criminal charges and sensitive to the propaganda campaign, withdrew his strike call. Lewis did not fully control the faction-ridden UAW and many locals ignored his call. One important strike was won by labor. Wages of operators averaged a third less than women in manufacturing. The company hired college students as strikebreakers, but they came under violent attack by men supporting the strikers. In a few days a settlement was reached giving higher wages. After the success O'Connor began a national campaign to organize women operators.

The s marked a period of sharp decline for the labor movement. Union membership and activities fell sharply in the face of economic prosperity, a lack of leadership within the movement, and anti-union sentiments from both employers and the government. The unions were much less able to organize strikes.

In , more than 4 million workers or 21 percent of the labor force participated in about 3, strikes. In contrast, witnessed about , workers or 1. After a short recession in , the s was a generally prosperous decade outside of farming and coal mining. The GNP growth was a very strong 6. The s also saw a lack of strong leadership within the labor movement.

Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor died in after serving as the organization's president for 37 years.

Observers said successor William Green, who was the secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers , "lacked the aggressiveness and the imagination of the AFL's first president". Employers across the nation led a successful campaign against unions known as the "American Plan", which sought to depict unions as "alien" to the nation's individualistic spirit.

In this decade, corporations used twice as many court injunctions against strikes than any comparable period. In addition, the practice of forcing employees by threat of termination to sign yellow-dog contracts that said they would not join a union was not outlawed until Although the labor movement fell in prominence during the s, the Great Depression would ultimately bring it back to life.

The Great Railroad Strike of , a nationwide railroad shop workers strike, began on July 1. The immediate cause of the strike was the Railroad Labor Board's announcement that hourly wages for railway repair and maintenance workers would be cut by seven cents on July 1. The operators' union did not join in the strike, and the railroads employed strikebreakers to fill three-fourths of the roughly , vacated positions, increasing hostilities between the railroads and the striking workers.

On September 1, a federal judge issued the sweeping "Daugherty Injunction" against striking, assembling, and picketing. Unions bitterly resented the injunction; a few sympathy strikes shut down some railroads completely.

The strike eventually died out as many shopmen made deals with the railroads on the local level. The often unpalatable concessions—coupled with memories of the violence and tension during the strike—soured relations between the railroads and the shopmen for years. The stock market crashed in October , and ushered in the Great Depression. By the winter of —33, the economy was so perilous that the unemployment rate hit the 25 percent mark. Some workers did indeed turn to such radical movements as the Communist Party, but, in general, the nation seemed to have been shocked into inaction".

Though unions were not acting yet, cities across the nation witnessed local and spontaneous marches by frustrated relief applicants. In , more than relief protests erupted in Chicago and that number grew to in The leadership behind these organizations often came from radical groups like Communist and Socialist parties, who wanted to organize "unfocused neighborhood militancy into organized popular defense organizations". Organized labor became more active in , with the passage of the Norris-La Guardia Act. Additionally, the act outlawed yellow-dog contracts , which were documents some employers forced their employees to sign to ensure they would not join a union; employees who refused to sign were terminated from their jobs.

The passage of the Norris-La Guardia Act signified a victory for the American Federation of Labor , which had been lobbying Congress to pass it for slightly more than five years. Up until the passage of this act, the collective bargaining rights of workers were severely hampered by judicial control. Roosevelt took office on March 4, , and immediately began implementing programs to alleviate the economic crisis. In June, he passed the National Industrial Recovery Act , which gave workers the right to organize into unions.

This portion, which was known as Section 7 a , was symbolic to workers in the United States because it stripped employers of their rights to either coerce them or refuse to bargain with them. Although the National Industrial Recovery Act was ultimately deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in and replaced by the Wagner Act two months after that, it fueled workers to join unions and strengthened those organizations. In response to both the Norris-La Guardia Act and the NIRA, workers who were previously unorganized in a number of industries—such as rubber workers, oil and gas workers and service workers—began to look for organizations that would allow them to band together.

In , 1, strikes occurred, involving more than 1. The elections of might have reflected the "radical upheaval sweeping the country", as Roosevelt won the greatest majority either party ever held in the Senate and Democrats won seats in the United States House of Representatives versus Republicans. It is possible that "the great social movement from below thus strengthened the independence of the executive branch of government".

Despite the impact of such changes on the United States' political structure and on workers' empowerment, some scholars have criticized the impacts of these policies from a classical economic perspective. Cole and Ohanian find that the New Deal's pro-labor policies are an important factor in explaining the weak recovery from the Great Depression and the rise in real wages in some industrial sectors during this time.

Labor history of the United States - Wikipedia

The AFL was growing rapidly, from 2. But it was experiencing severe internal stresses regarding how to organize new members. Most AFL leaders, including president William Green , were reluctant to shift from the organization's longstanding craft unionism and started to clash with other leaders within the organization, such as John L. The issue came up at the annual AFL convention in San Francisco in and , but the majority voted against a shift to industrial unionism both years.

After the defeat at the convention, nine leaders from the industrial faction led by Lewis met and organized the Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL to "encourage and promote organization of workers in the mass production industries" for "educational and advisory" functions. Lewis threw his support behind Franklin D. After the passage of the Wagner Act in , Lewis traded on the tremendous appeal that Roosevelt had with workers in those days, sending organizers into the coal fields to tell workers "The President wants you to join the Union.

Lewis expanded his base by organizing the so-called "captive mines", those held by the steel producers such as U. That required in turn organizing the steel industry, which had defeated union organizing drives in and and which had resisted all organizing efforts since then fiercely. The task of organizing steelworkers, on the other hand, put Lewis at odds with the AFL, which looked down on both industrial workers and the industrial unions that represented all workers in a particular industry, rather than just those in a particular skilled trade or craft.

Lewis was the first president of the Committee of Industrial Organizations. Lewis, in fact, was the CIO: The most dramatic success was the sit-down strike that paralyzed General Motors. The CIO's actual membership as opposed to publicity figures was 2,, for February The remaining membership of , was scattered among thirty-odd smaller unions.

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Historians of the union movement in the s have tried to explain its remarkable success in terms of the rank and file—what motivated them to suddenly rally around leaders such as John L. Lewis who had been around for decades with little success. Why was the militancy of the mids so short lived? The war mobilization dramatically expanded union membership, from 8. For the first time large numbers of women factory workers were enrolled. However, Lewis opposed Roosevelt on foreign policy grounds in All labor unions strongly supported the war effort after June when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

Left-wing activists crushed wildcat strikes. Nonetheless, Lewis realized that he had enormous leverage. In , the middle of the war, when the rest of labor was observing a policy against strikes, Lewis led the miners out on a twelve-day strike for higher wages. The bipartisan Conservative coalition in Congress passed anti-union legislation over liberal opposition, most notably the Taft-Hartley Act of A statistical analysis of the AFL and CIO national and local leaders in shows that opportunity for advancement in the labor movement was wide open.

In contrast with other elites, the labor leaders did not come from established WASP families with rich, well-educated backgrounds. Indeed, they closely resembled the overall national population of adult men, with fewer from the South and from farm backgrounds. The union leaders were heavily Democratic. The newer CIO had a younger leadership, and one more involved with third parties, and less involved with local civic activities. He ousted the Communists from the positions of power, especially at the Ford local. Using brilliant negotiating tactics he leveraged high profits for the Big Three automakers into higher wages and superior benefits for UAW members.

New enemies appeared for the labor unions after Newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler was especially outraged by the New Deal's support for powerful labor unions that he considered morally and politically corrupt. Pegler saw himself a populist and muckraker whose mission was to warn the nation that dangerous leaders were in power. In Pegler became the first columnist ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, for his work in exposing racketeering in Hollywood labor unions, focusing on the criminal career of William Morris Bioff.

Pegler's popularity reflected a loss of support for unions and liberalism generally, especially as shown by the dramatic Republican gains in the elections, often using an anti-union theme. With the end of the war in August came a wave of major strikes , mostly led by the CIO. In November, the UAW sent their , GM workers to the picket lines; they were joined in January by a half-million steelworkers, as well as over , electrical workers and , packinghouse workers. Combined with many smaller strikes a new record of strike activity was set.

The results were mixed, with the unions making some gains, but the economy was disordered by the rapid termination of war contracts, the complex reconversion to peacetime production, the return to the labor force of 12 million servicemen, and the return home of millions of women workers. The conservative control of Congress blocked liberal legislation, and " Operation Dixie ", the CIO's efforts to expand massively into the South, failed.

The Republicans exploited public anger at the unions in , winning a smashing landslide. Labor responded afterwards by taking strong actions. The CIO systematically purged communists and far-left sympathizers from leadership roles in its unions. The AFL increasingly abandoned its historic tradition of nonpartisanship, since neutrality between the major parties was impossible. By , the AFL had given up on decentralization, local autonomy, and non-partisanship, and had developed instead a new political approach marked by the same style of centralization, national coordination, and partisan alliances that characterized the CIO.

The Labor Management Relations Act of , also known as the Taft—Hartley Act , in revised the Wagner Act to include restrictions on unions as well as management. It was a response to public demands for action after the wartime coal strikes and the postwar strikes in steel, autos and other industries that were perceived to have damaged the economy, as well as a threatened railroad strike that was called off at the last minute before it shut down the national economy. The Act was bitterly fought by unions, vetoed by President Harry S.

Truman , and passed over his veto. Repeated union efforts to repeal or modify it always failed, and it remains in effect today. The Act was sponsored by Senator Robert A. Taft and Representative Fred Hartley , both Republicans. Congress overrode the veto on June 23, , establishing the act as a law. Truman described the act as a "slave-labor bill" in his veto, but after it was enacted over his veto, he used its emergency provisions a number of times to halt strikes and lockouts.

The new law required all union officials to sign an affidavit that they were not Communists or else the union would lose its federal bargaining powers guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Board. The amendments added to the NLRA a list of prohibited actions, or "unfair labor practices", on the part of unions. The NLRA had previously prohibited only unfair labor practices committed by employers.

It prohibited jurisdictional strikes , in which a union strikes in order to pressure an employer to assign particular work to the employees that union represents, and secondary boycotts and "common situs" picketing , in which unions picket, strike, or refuse to handle the goods of a business with which they have no primary dispute but which is associated with a targeted business.

A later statute, the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act , passed in , tightened these restrictions on secondary boycotts still further. The Act outlawed closed shops , which were contractual agreements that required an employer to hire only union members. Union shops , in which new recruits must join the union within a certain amount of time, are permitted, but only as part of a collective bargaining agreement and only if the contract allows the worker at least thirty days after the date of hire or the effective date of the contract to join the union.

The National Labor Relations Board and the courts have added other restrictions on the power of unions to enforce union security clauses and have required them to make extensive financial disclosures to all members as part of their duty of fair representation. On the other hand, a few years after the passage of the Act Congress repealed the provisions requiring a vote by workers to authorize a union shop, when it became apparent that workers were approving them in virtually every case. The amendments also authorized individual states to outlaw union security clauses entirely in their jurisdictions by passing "right-to-work" laws.

Currently all of the states in the Deep South and a number of traditionally Republican states in the Midwest , Plains and Rocky Mountains regions have right-to-work laws. The amendments required unions and employers to give sixty days' notice before they may undertake strikes or other forms of economic action in pursuit of a new collective bargaining agreement; it did not, on the other hand, impose any "cooling-off period" after a contract expired. Although the Act also authorized the President to intervene in strikes or potential strikes that create a national emergency, the President has used that power less and less frequently in each succeeding decade.

The AFL had always opposed Communists inside the labor movement. After they took their crusade worldwide. The CIO had major Communist elements who played a key role in organizational work in the late s and war years. By they were purged. Left-wing elements in the CIO protested and were forced out of the main unions.

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